Comparison of Simulated Annealing and Great Deluge Algorithms for University Course Timetabling Problems (UCTP)

This paper presents the metaheuristics approach in solving a real world problem of University Course Timetabling in Universiti Malaysia Sabah Labuan International Campus (UMSLIC), Malaysia. The problem domain in UMSLIC has several constraints which need to be satisfied. Solutions are considered as feasible if the hard constraints are satisfied, while minimizing the cost of soft constraints as much as possible. In this research, the comparison between Simulated Annealing (SA) and Great Deluge (GD) algorithm are proposed in order to determine the scheduling performance in UMSLIC timetabling problem. The results demonstrate that both SA and GD algorithms are able to improve the quality of initial solution but the performance are vary in different datasets which may not perform the best in every domain.